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Under the new rules a domain transfer cannot be held up if the existing registrar fails to respond to a notification concerning the change within five days. This raises the possibility of domain names being transferred without the express knowledge of the losing registrar.

The new ICANN rules were outlined in July although only today do they come into affect. In the US, there is a competing system of registrars who are able to alter the domain name databases held by companies such as Verisign, which manages the .net and .com TLDs. Therefore, ICANN, which manages the internet

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and accredits the registrars, has put in place new rules to ease transfers from one domain to another.

Once the change has been made, it can only be changed back with the agreement of the Registrar of Record and the Gaining Registrar that the transfer was made by mistake or by the decision of an agreed dispute resolution body or a court order.

The change is likely to result in a spate of requests to 'lock down' domains which blocks changes in the registrar, contact information and nameservers for a domain. ICANN says that it doesn't expect a host of disputes to arise as the gaining registrar still needs to verify that the request is genuine either by seeing physical evidence such as a driving licence or authorisation from someone holding the email address registered as the contact address of the owner. However, a number of registrars have written to domain holders warning them of the impending changes and recommending that domains are 'locked down'

The situation is different in Britain. Here, Nominet, which is the UK registry of domain names, has a contract directly with the domain owners not with the companies which register domain names. Nominet is therefore in a position to settle disputes more easily than the US.